


scream your secrets into the silence

by dovahfiin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Leia has vices, Multi, Painkillers, Past Leia Organa/Han Solo, Recreational Drug Use, Skywalker Family Drama, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-05 16:39:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14048421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovahfiin/pseuds/dovahfiin
Summary: One year after Crait, the Resistance has grown and thrives on Chandrila.As the new Resistance sends operatives to gather information regarding the state of the First Order, a more personal battle rages among the officers of the cause.





	1. Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This contains tie-ins to _The Philosophy of Myrtles_ and _Around Our Ankles Winds a Flowering Tumult_. Reading those first might make more sense with some of the AU stuff Obi-Wan and Anakin (as Force ghosts) discuss here.  
>  2\. I like the idea of Leia being both regal and rough around the edges. How else could she deal with losing everyone she loved?  
> 3\. Poe can literally never shut up and I feel like his inability to keep it together is canonical.   
> 4\. I'm no good at writing hetero luuurve, but Phasma's going to get pretty gay. Let me know what my attempts at writing M/F stuff is like.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke and Rey.

  
He calls her his _desert flower_ , which is at first an offensive moniker. Rey does not consider herself delicate; but he explains later that she managed to grow despite her lifeless surroundings on Jakku, and that is why he has assigned her the unflattering nickname. She learns to love it, manages to keep her sword arm strong even when he unfairly breathes it into her ear during sparring sessions.

  


  
Rey had gone to Christophsis after Crait, traversing the crystalline planet and badly spraining her ankle in an effort to stretch herself to fetch the amethyst that had called to her. Luke had scooped her up, swearing in Huttese as he carried her back to the _Falcon_. Somewhere between Christophsis and Chandrila, they had kissed. It was understood, as with the same acceptance as the color of the sky, that Luke and Rey were connected. No one questioned this; no one dared, after all, because it's _Luke Skywalker_ , and who would dare to question a legend?

  


  
Hubris still comes in handy when the alternative is having to answer inconvenient questions, like _how much older are you_ , and _shouldn't you find someone your own age?_.

  


  
They maintain the same living space, and they are sent on missions separately and together. Leia has never once questioned their ability to do their jobs in spite of their relationship. She loves Rey like an older sibling would a younger one, and Rey looks to Leia for both guidance as an officer and advice on how to navigate her brother's residual torment from a long life of loss and regret. In Leia, Rey has found the friendship she had pined for on Jakku. In Rey, Leia sees a mirror image of herself; and a chance to get it right after years of running from her truth.

  


  
Luke is on Christophsis now, finding kyber for his own lightsaber. He'd thrown the old green blade into the rolling waves of Ahch-To, the same one with which he had dueled his father and the same one he had ignited against his nephew. It felt like an anniversary. Rey supposes it is, in terms of time passed since they admitted to each other that their feelings extended beyond those of a master toward their apprentice.

  


  
It does not surprise her when he reaches out to her in the dead of night on the eve of his return to Chandrila.

  


  
_I found one._

  


  
_Is it green?_

  


  
_Fuck no._

  


  
_Well? Are you going to make me wait?_

  


  
_I have to go to Tatooine for the rest of the components. I know a guy._

__  


  
Rey scoffs. _Hurry up. Leia needs us in the Outer Rim; she says there's chatter after months of radio silence. I wonder if Kylo -_

  


  
The connection is placid for a time, and then _If he's there, we'll find him. He won't be able to sense us and leave well enough alone. I hope he's raging with jealousy that his crusty old uncle beds you._

  


  
_You're disgusting._

__  


  
_I love you._

__  


  
_I know._

__  



	2. Traitors All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phasma and Finn.

  
The first time he had bested her in a duel, it was aboard the _Supremacy_. Vengeance means nothing when the alternative was information that could be invaluable to the Resistance, so he reached out - his chest heaving pleas, his mouth breathing the fire winding around their feet. She took his hand, and Rose nearly shot her on the basis that she had cost them time. They made it, and FN-2187 convinced his counterpart that the chromium armor no longer encased a First Order puppet but a woman of flesh and blood who understood. Only then did she hesitantly holster the blaster she had pilfered from the smoldering durasteel, but her eyes sang caution until they closed again on Crait. Phasma finds herself impressed with such tenacity, disbelieving that it could come from someone other than a stormtrooper.

  


  
Phasma is bested a second time on a cliff overlooking a jutting, craggy cliff on Junari Point. Bulabirds circled overhead, goading them to spill blood as the captain drew a vibroblade also made of the hull of her hero's ship. Her jabs and parries are expertly timed, but Finn - as she has learned to call him since, but it is as an unfamiliar weapon in her hands she can touch but doesn't know how to use - backs her up so that her boots kick pebbles from the cliff to the swirling ocean below.

  


  
Honor demanded that he should have killed her. The philosophy of their training, which was almost a tangible thing as he held her at knifepoint, dictated that a weakened unit would threaten the level of service and morale of the rest of the stormtroopers. How long had it been since Phasma could rightly claim that title? It means nothing in this brave new world, in the end, as the salt from the sea stings her chapped lips. Finn blinks once, twice, as if waking from a trance. He reaches out to her again, and again she takes his hand. They go to the piecemeal bar and get drunk on Trandoshan ale, stumbling back to the base with wild, unhinged mirth painted on their mouths.

  


  
They never spar after that day, not against each other. Leia says nothing, pairing them with other opponents during their training sessions. They are her two most valuable assassins, and Phasma supposes that they share a bond in the knowledge they possess. The greatest thing she can do for the Resistance has nothing to do with the art of bloodletting, and everything to do with forgiveness. This is a concept she was not bred to know, but one that she learns alongside Finn and with Leia's sympathetic offerings of Deychin tea and conversation. She takes neither for several standard weeks.

  


  
It is after her first kill - a supply officer on Dantooine with datacards full of proof that the First Order is effectively back on their feet, knowledge that makes her heart rise to her throat - that Finn becomes more bold; that Phasma seeks the absolution only he can provide.

  


  
"I want to talk to you."

  


  
"Then speak."

  


  
It isn't meant to be a rudeness, and she sounds far less intimidating without the mechanized component of the vocoder in her helmet. Finn should be used to the bluntness, but the Resistance prefers excessive politeness to the point of standing on ceremony. Phasma has been unable to acclimate to this change.

  


  
Finn takes a shallow, shuddering breath. "Does it ever go away? Do you ever forgive yourself?"

  


  
It is not a question so much as it is an expository statement. _I only did what I was told_.

  


  
"You won't always be able to see their faces. It is the desperation that has a lingering smell, and that will never completely fade. When you go on these missions, your marks will reek of it. This time, however, we are on the winning side."

  


  
"Somehow I don't think that makes it easier."

  


  
"Think of those you killed unjustly buried under the bodies of men who deserve it."

  


  
"Do you?"

  


  
Phasma has never discussed the effects of wartime on the psyche. Whenever she had experienced the rigors of destruction too acutely, she had but to go to reprogramming and the droid would administer the intravenous injection without a single node of emotion, which is precisely what she needed (because the guilt had eaten most of her). The seal of her helmet would signal the treatment's end, and she would stalk down the halls with her blaster held a little tighter to her chest each time, her shoulders a just that much higher around her neck.

  


  
"There is only one body, and it cannot cover all of them. The count will increase in time, and then only a sea of dark uniforms and a line of rank bars stretching to infinity will be the only thing I see. And then I will have healed. So will you, given time. And bodies."

  


  
Killing is a language, ordered and florid. This is what they were taught when they first donned the armor of stormtroopers; that the rules of the grammar of death revolve around speaking from a place of victory and not regret. Phasma and Finn had broken the rules in their turn. Now that the Resistance uses them for their fluency in that language, it is a comfort not to wonder after the rightness of the death they speak.

  


  
"You have no reason to trust me now, though when you deal the first blow against one of them alone, you will understand. My grief is gone. My purpose is clear."

  


  
Finn seems to accept this. They wait for the base to wake up, overlapping their fingers for purchase against the greatest enemy, the enemy that lives between their resolve and their fear. "This is not the end" Phasma says with a softness that for once matches the light in her pale blue eyes. "Death is never the end."

  


  
Finn believes her. Phasma holds out her hand, unencumbered by a gauntlet and unadorned by the armor of her ancestor. He takes it, and he believes her.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Stormtrooper culture is interesting to me in large part because of my Marine Corps past. I find the two cultures quite similar.  
> 2\. Conjugate: BIOLOGY  
> (of bacteria or unicellular organisms) become temporarily united in order to exchange genetic material. I like to f*ck with words.  
> 3\. Phasma's parentage is revealed only if you don't blink.


	3. Credibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia and Poe.

  
It is Dr. Kalorian's bedside manner - the way she delivers less than favorable news with a sympathetic steeple of her brows and a wan, empathetic smile - that makes the end of his career as a pilot easier to bear. She has spent the last fifteen minutes explaining, using words Poe can't pronounce but that he trusts as he would any of his pilots in Black Squadron, the dramatic curvature of his spine. The source of his debilitating pain can be traced back to being shuttered in a cockpit from the time he entered primary school, when his body was still developing and most children were chasing each other with models of T16-Skyhoppers. Poe Dameron was not most children, and so he left them to their make-believe while he touched the sky, skimming the atmosphere of Yavin 4 in an old RZ-1 A-wing.

  


  
But there were new heights, the good doctor said, to which he could ascend if only he changed his mindset.

  


  
This isn't a simple matter of changing his mind. Poe had always been a pilot, his identity centered around a new-to-him Rebellion-era X-Wing Leia was able to salvage from an old Imp shipyard above Kartoosh. He hadn't told her about what Dr. Kalorian said, and he hadn't told her that the carbon-scored ship hadn't felt like his, and so space - which he had come to think of as central to his survival, like his skin or his heart - no longer belonged to him.

  


  
It is useless, hiding things from General Leia Organa. When Poe's annual physical results came across her desk, he was already gone on a mission to the Outer Rim, picking up First Order chatter and transmitting the logs directly to Leia. It wasn't a surprise, but it felt like a betrayal all the same.

  


  
She slaps him for a second time when he gingerly shimmies down from his ship. He doesn't vault over the side anymore, and she had wondered why. Having received confirmation that he was hurt, she was burning with the kind of worry she hadn't had to weather since Han died.

  


  
"How fucking dare you." Poe stared at her, his mouth working to form words but his mind was not fast enough for what he knew was coming. She whirled around, unable to find the words until they were safely ensconced in the privacy of her office. When the door closes, she keys an access code to lock it and guides his confused, searching face to hers. The kiss is short, but intense. He keens. She slaps him again.

  


  
"I have been quite happy with the lack of secrecy in my life, Poe. As I'm sure you know, we can't afford it right now. Complete transparency must be the cornerstone of how we operate; it's how the Resistance will be built, and it's how I must order my life if I want to regain what I lost." She speaks of the knowledge of her father's identity, now common and condemning. The Senate, frustratingly apathetic in every other case, was brought to its knees when it was leaked that Anakin Skywalker was Leia's father.

  


  
"The entire reason I didn't tell you was because I didn't want you to pull me from these Outer Rim missions. Not when we're so close to finding out their position when we could -"

  


  
She sits down at her desk, normally pristine but occupied with flimsiplasts and datacards in some sort of order that isn't apparent at first glance. "It's over, Poe."

  


  
"What?"

  


  
"I told you that I wouldn't fall prey to the mentality of so many pilots. You are no different than Han."

  


  
"That's bullshit and you know it. You were afraid of losing me -"

  


  
"Captain Dameron, your spine is disintegrating. I could use you as a field operative given your love of reconnaissance, but as of now, you're grounded. Also" she pulls the silver band off of her ring finger and sets it on the table as if it were the most valuable thing she owned (when Poe knew that she had an array of finer things, and that's what he could afford on a rebel's budget) "I meant that _we_ are done."

  


  
The divorce was amicable, quiet, with an aching sadness to match his labored steps from pain a lesser man would not have been able to withstand. They are both professionals, and she has done this once already. It could be worse; as it stood, they had no assets over which to haggle and he had signed a pre-nuptial agreement, accepting that were the marriage to dissolve, none of Leia's wealth would belong to him. It didn't anyway. They had kept separate quarters and separate lives even after they were married - in secret, she had mused, just like her mother - and they wouldn't have been able to be forthright about their union anyway as it was still considered fraternization; not to mention vile to some, as she was old enough to be his mother.

  


  
Those who were observant knew that something had been liberated in Leia and died in Poe. The Nyex dependency started sometime after the end of the marriage had been finalized; he could work as an operative, his transportation commended to other pilots who made a point not to stare when he popped two too many of the white pills Dr. Kalorian kept giving him. The nerves in his back were quieted, and as a bonus, his conscience was too.

  


  
"I told you to leave him well enough alone" Luke said, after coming home from Christophsis and still smelling like old sweat and fresh sex. "Perhaps we're more like father than I'd thought."

  


  
"Our father was the consort to the devil, Luke. I merely married my first husband all over again."

  


  
"Yes. You've made a hobby of grief. Meanwhile, that boy is holed up in his quarters wishing you would at least say something to him. He still loves you, and always will. He just may not respect you, and that's worse."

  


  
So she sought him out, and instead found the captain face down in his own sick in his room, the floor dotted with little white pills like snow. Luke helped her take him to the medbay, where Dr. Kalorian administered a hypospray that reversed the effects of a drug overdose. Leia used was little ability she had to employ the Force in keeping the situation off of Dameron's official record, to which Luke turned a blind eye. Love is not a game for the righteous.

  


  
This was the same strain of embarrassment that had infected her when the name _Anakin Skywalker_ was irrevocably tied to her own. Poe withstood the pain of his injury, a guarantee that someday he would only be able to watch the galaxy change rather than affect it firsthand - and shouldered his fate, retiring his helmet in a closet in his quarters he could and did lock. Somewhere, Leia had hidden the two halves of her father's lightsaber. She hated the thought of owning it, but couldn't stand the prospect of parting with a piece of her past.

  


  
So they orbit one another, like distant moons circling around a truth neither wants to say aloud and which both of them find peace in not telling each other. If she kisses him, it is only to afford comfort because she understands. If he kisses her back, it is only in apology. She lets him, and he lets her, and together they carry enough weight in repentance for the entire Resistance.

  



	4. Burdens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phasma and Mon Mothma.

  
"You don't look like your portrayals in the Holovids."

  


  
Chancellor Mothma chuckles. "I shall take that as a compliment. When the Empire was at the height of its influence, I was youthful but lacked the experience to lead. What you saw is raw passion; while useful at times, it is not the only method with which to effect change. It isn't the best method." She spoke with the same razor-sharp elocution, the practiced diplomacy of a life-long politician, and Phasma was immediately enamored. "Besides, the appearance of age carries with it a vague belief that one is wise. I need that as the Senate continues to change."

  


  
Phasma brings her hand up to her own face, scarred with reminders of her duel with Finn aboard the flaming _Supremacy_. "Then what does my face show?"

  


  
"Pain. Suffering. But not without cause; you are a tremendous asset to the Resistance" she looks down at her feet, not stopping as they walk along a beaten path littered with pine needles "and to me."

  


  
Had someone told Phasma that she would be enjoying a romantic relationship with a hero of the Rebellion and the reigning Chancellor of the New Republic, she would not have believed them and would have likely killed them on principle. Now, as they walk through the fecund forest smelling of fresh rain and healthy pine, Phasma is disinclined to believe that she ever possessed such a hair-trigger temper. Something about the aging politician calmed her, soothed her in a way that she could divest herself of her former life and learn to embrace relationship. This is something she had never thought possible, the enjoyment of another's body - but Mothma is patient, and Phasma is an eager pupil.

  


  
"Kashyyyk was a site of great bloodshed during the initial years of the Empire. Wookiees seek reparations for that time, although they were not immune to the tyranny of the First Order. I wanted you to see it firsthand as a lesson in history, not just because you are fluent in Shyriiwook - although that has been immensely beneficial."

  


  
Phasma's catalog of her family mythology reaches back to a time when her father traveled to Naboo for such a leisurely holiday. As the two women represented different bodies of government - one a rebel, and one a politician - it couldn't be called fraternization. Mon was particularly cautious when it came to Phasma, as she is the one who had confirmed her paternity. "You have just as much to lose as General Organa by virtue of your bloodline. Of course I wish the galaxy accepted one's merit above one's parentage - that is not fault of either of yours - but I cannot change their minds. They must willingly come to this knowledge. On the other hand, if I am not mistaken, you have never shown an interest in politicking."

  


  
"No. I am not my father." It comes out with more force than she had intended, and Mothma turns to look at her with eyebrows raised. "I - endeavor to carve out a different path for myself. I would prefer it if we were open about our relationship; Luke and Rey are, and no one -"

  


  
"They are both Jedi. You are essentially a prisoner of war, even if you are thus willing, but I am still chancellor. The disruption it would cause would derail our efforts to unite the Core Worlds and quell the fear the First Order has sown in the Outer Rim. I cannot take that chance."

  


  
Phasma understands this intellectually, but her heart beats a hint of grief. Mon senses this and ghosts her fingertips down the length of Phasma's arm as they continue to walk. In that moment, the former stormtrooper realizes that she is walking between the chancellor and the edge of Kashyyyk's wilderness. She would rather be mauled by some native fauna than harm coming to the chancellor, and this alarms her - it is tangible proof that she has changed, that she is no longer a captain of stormtroopers. "Someday, we will not be so encumbered by our duties. That, at least, I can promise you."

  


  
When they return to the base, Phasma is tired. The walk hasn't exerted her; rather, it's a sense of peace unlike anything she has ever experienced. There had been only chaos within the First Order - it simply wasn't the well-oiled machine that sniveling Kylo Ren so desperately wanted it to be, and most of her job as a mid-level officer involved the grinding work of maintaining an illusion of cohesion that exhausted her. She hadn't known rest before coming to the Resistance. With Mothma, she had come to know the surety in peace.

  


  
The chancellor did invite Phasma to her bed that night, but not for the usual activities Phasma has seen other involved couples run off to do on Chandrila. Mon's touches are intimate while not sexual, inviting yet timid.

  


  
"You are not Anakin Skywalker, and I am not my father. If that is what is holding you back, let me take the burden of that parallel from you."

  


  
"You already ease every burden carry. I worry that I ask too much."

  


  
Phasma doesn't hesitate. "That could never be."

  


  
Perhaps they are entirely like the relationship that ended General Organa's political career and discredited her family line. Perhaps it wasn't fair, and the galaxy eats its own because they're starving for outrage, for a place to put the blame for what a monster Ben Solo turned out be. If they had to assign it to someone, they may as well give it to Phasma. These proud, stately women are not to blame for who he became; but a line can be drawn straight from Kylo Ren's bruised mind to Phasma, and she can take that weight as surely as she does all the others.

  


  
"Leave it to me, Chancellor Mothma."

  


  
Phasma decides that she will be the one to kill Kylo Ren when the time comes. She hopes that they can forgive her when she does.

  



End file.
